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Okay, let's go through this again in small step. In bold what we know Ikuko choses to do.

Stranger!Ikuko

Possibilities:

She finds an injured unknown guy on the street and carries him to the doctor where she discovers the guy suffers of amnesia. She can:
- let the doctor contact the police so they'll search for whoever hit him
- break law and bribe the doctor so as to let the crime unpunished

She finds an injured guy whom she recognizes as Battler on the street and carries him to the doctor where she discovers he suffers of amnesia. She can:
- contact his family so he could go back to his aunt and sister who hopefully will help him recover his memory and take care of him.
- let the doctor contact the police so they'll search for whoever hit him and inform his family they've found him
- break law and bribe the doctor so as to let the crime unpunished, not tell him who his family nor let his family know he's alive

She hit a guy with her car on the street. Then she carries him to the doctor where she discovers the guy suffers of amnesia. She can:
- turn herself to the police
- break law and bribe the doctor so as to let her crime unpunished

She hit a guy whom later she recognizes as Battler with her car on the street. Then she carries him to the doctor where she discovers the guy suffers of amnesia. She can:
- turn herself to the police
- bribe the doctor so as to let her crime unpunished but still ask him to warn Battler's family he's alive and let him return to them or warn them herself
- break law and bribe the doctor so as to let her crime unpunished and never inform the Ushiromiya Battler is alive or let him know what his true identity is

And now let's dwelve deeper in the assumptions she can make if she discovered he was Battler, apparently short after she had found him.

If she assumed it was an incident, like likely the first reports reported and the police will later declare she can decide:
- it's better for Battler to return to his family who probably loves him and miss him and warn/have them warned he was found
- inform Battler about who he is so he can choose if he wants return to them regardless of not remembering them even though he's trying to recover his memories and the fact the press and police will probably bug him
- none of the above. It's better to break law and bribe the doctor and keep everyone in the dark about him being alive and never inform him about who he is. Being bugged by press and police is way worse than letting loving relative assume he's dead and mourning him and him having his identity being stolen.

If she assumed it wasn't an incident as some speculated without proof whatsoever and the culprit was an unknown person she can decide:
- it's better for Battler to return to his family who probably loves him and miss him and warn/have them warned he was found
- inform Battler about who he is so he can choose if he wants return to them regardless of not remembering them even though he's trying to recover his memories and the fact the press and police will probably bug him
- none of the above. It's better to break law and bribe the doctor and keep everyone in the dark about him being alive and never inform him about who he is. Being bugged by press and police is way worse than letting loving relative assume he's dead and mourning him and him having his identity being stolen

If she assumed it wasn't an incident as some speculated without proof whatsoever and the culprit was Eva she can decide:
- it's better for Battler to hand him to the police. They might investigate the matter further and discover some evidence as well as help Battler to remember things and take Ange away from Eva.
- inform Battler about who he is so he can choose what he wants to do and, at the same time, might find easier to remember things so that he might find a way to accuse Eva, have her punished and take Ange away from her.
- none of the above. It's better to break law and bribe the doctor and keep everyone in the dark about him being alive and never inform him about who he is. Who cares about punishing Eva or letting in her care a poor kid of 6 after she murdered her relatives? And why should Battler decide about something or try to save his own sister? The risk/stress this stranger would have to face is too big, better let him in the dark and keep him as 'guest'.

If she assumed it wasn't an incident as some speculated without proof whatsoever and the culprit was Battler she can decide:
- it's better she hands Battler to the police. They might find a way to put him into prison and anyway it's not safe to associate with a guy who murdered all his family
- it's better let the doctor hands Battler to the police. They might find a way to put him into prison and anyway it's not safe to associate with a guy who murdered all his family and Battler wouldn't be able to blame her for his arrest as it would be the doctor who handed him and he'd barely saw her.
- break law and bribe the doctor and take Battler home. Everyone wants to have a serial murderer as a guest.

I don't know why but no matter how much I analyze stranger!Ikuko's choices, somehow they never seem the best ones...

Now for par condicio I'd like to make Yasu!Ikuko but with Yasu!Ikuko we've too many variants:

- was she on Rokkenjima in the first place or we merely assumed she was because she portrayed herself as present in the forgeries she wrote?
- if she was in Rokkenjima is she aware of what happened and who caused the insland to go KABOOM? Is this person Battler? Eva? Herself? Someone else?
- if she was in Rokkenjima and doesn't know the truth of what had happened, did she saw/heard something that made her believe the contrary?
- if she was in Rokkenjima but isn't aware of what had happened does she have suspicions that she believes to be true? If so, whom she suspect and can she prove her suspicions? Are their suspicions right or wrong?
- did she voluntary or involuntary set things into motion?
- Is she aware someone else voluntary or involuntary set things into motion? If so who this person was? (Eva, Battler, someone else)
- how and when she managed to assume the identity of Ikuko?
- things really happened like Battler told Ange (he escaped, capsized, ended on a street) or he changed/omitted some parts (he escaped with Yasu, they took on different identities, one day he had a car incident and Yasu found him and you know the rest of the story...or even he was kidnapped by Yasu, tried to escape, had an incident and you know the rest of the story...)?
- was Yasu so traumatized by what happened that she denied all of her past and subconsciously embraced the fictional identity of Ikuko replacing her memory with fictional ones? (yes, it's possible and it's different from amnesia as you believe you've memories... only actually those memories aren't real...)
- was the culprit really one of the people assumed to be on the island or it was someone else (for example the Sumadera's men in black)?
- does Eva know that she's taking care of Battler and approved of it?
- ...

... and so I'm not going to deal with them all since according to which one you pick you get way too much possibilities between which to chose and that make Yasu respectively:

- a monster as not only she caused everyone's death but she's deliberately keeping Battler for herself
- a jerk as she's not responsible of what had happened but she's consciously still trying to take advantage of the situation
- dumb as she honestly believe that what she's doing is the best for Battler when it's not
- so blindly in love with Battler she's covering up for him even when he's behind everyone's death
- someone with the worst luck. Battler escaped with her willingly and willingly decided not to return home and then he had to go and lose memory and she thinks it's better this way because so he won't feel guilty about abandoning Ange but then she feels bad about him forgetting her and didn't realize how much damage could do to him by helping him to recover his memory.
- someone who's temporally mentally unstable and living in denial.
- someone who did something stupid hiding to Battler his true identity, realized she'd done the wrong thing and tried to fix it by helping him to remember to realize she just made matters worse.

And so on.

Now... some theories might seem more possible than others but since Umineko doesn't really care for appeal to probability in its solutions there's no insurance that something, just because it's more likely, more probable, is truer than something else.

In the end: pick whatever theory you'll prefer and make it your golden truth.
I seriously doubt with the info we have someone will manage to turn a theory into red truth but anyway if you feel like trying good luck.

@jjblue1:
A very good breakdown of possible scenarios. Thanks for your hard work. Indeed the possibilities are unlimited and as long as we don't get some kind of confirmation about one of these from R07 in some way (like the EP8 manga), we will continue to stay in the dark. All I wanted to say was basically, that Yasu!Ikuko=evil and Stranger!Ikuko=grey is nothing but an assumption.

Quote:

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

That's retarded. Eva knew who the culprit was, allegedly, and she didn't even orchestrate a complicated murder mystery game/inheritance gambit that involved buying off a bunch of the adults.

You know, like Yasu did.

All this argument accomplishes, is making a scenario where Yasu does not know who the perpetrator is, at best "a bit less likely" and is no more than a straw man argument.
Also as jjblue1 said, there is the possibility that Yasu was not on Rokkenjima at all during the incident.

Quote:

Originally Posted by AuraTwilight

Battler doesn't know because HE HAS AMNESIA, stupid.

I was not referring to Prime!Battler/Tohya. I was talking about the fictional Forgery!Battler.

@jjblue1:
A very good breakdown of possible scenarios. Thanks for your hard work. Indeed the possibilities are unlimited and as long as we don't get some kind of confirmation about one of these from R07 in some way (like the EP8 manga), we will continue to stay in the dark. All I wanted to say was basically, that Yasu!Ikuko=evil and Stranger!Ikuko=grey is nothing but an assumption.

Thank you. And I agree. At the moment they're just theories. Let's hope more would be revealed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by GreyZone

I was not referring to Prime!Battler/Tohya. I was talking about the fictional Forgery!Battler.

And a thing interesting about Forgery!Battler isn't only that he doesn't know who the culprit is but also that even when he knows Eva shot him in Ep 3 he doesn't know that Yasu killed Nanjo and possibly the others and that Eva might have shoot him for the same reason Rosa wanted to shoot him in Ep 2, because she believed he was the culprit.

And I remember in the past there was a theory about Eva's diary containing the truth as she saw it... which meant that even if the fact reported were true the conclusions that one could reach reading/seeing them might not be true.

In Ep 3 Eva and Battler saw Shannon's unmoving body lying on the ground when they found George and thought she was dead... but actually she was faking it. Eva previously also heard that Shannon was declared dead by Nanjo... which was another lie.
However she can say in red.We found Shannon and Nanjo declared she was dead.
Later I saw her unmoving body lying next to George's face down. Probably my son couldn't accept the idea he would never see her again and went to see her another time when he was attacked.
All this is undoutely true but leads us to think that Shannon is dead when she's not.

And a thing interesting about Forgery!Battler isn't only that he doesn't know who the culprit is but also that even when he knows Eva shot him in Ep 3 he doesn't know that Yasu killed Nanjo and possibly the others and that Eva might have shoot him for the same reason Rosa wanted to shoot him in Ep 2, because she believed he was the culprit.

Not quite. For this reasoning to work we'd first have to give a clear definition of Forgery!Battler, which is something that has been often discussed. It is basically the question of, "is Meta!Battler=Forgery!Battler?" or by extension the age old question "do the Forgeries include Meta?"

The Meta!Battler of EP3 at that point knew why Eva was shooting him, because to him she was the culprit in that moment. He trusted Beato so much he was ready to sign into the existence of witches, but was only ripped out of it by Ange's sudden appearance.
The question would rather be, how Forgery!Battler arrived at the point where he accused Eva or if he simply arrived at it by being able to exclude every other possible culprit. They were in the parlor during that scene, so assuming Jessica was dead in the parlor or vanished it wouldn't be unlikely to assume Eva the culprit.

But, if we go by the Meta!Battler=Touya theory, wouldn't it be likely that at the point of releasing Banquet he actually believed in Eva being the culprit? Then we could assume that Ange's appearance in the Meta-World is her attempt at reaching Hachijou Touya, which was mentioned in EP8's ???.

The problem about Forgery!Battler in this context is, that he can only be written with the knowledge that the author(s) hold.
Yasu's Battler was likely written before the incident, so if we consider that the incident that happened is not the plan that she had, then her Battler, Forgery!Battler(A) can have no knowledge of the actual culprit and is likely not given knowledge of her intended culprit Beatrice's true identity.
You could basically say that the Meta-Battler of EP2 was the opponent that Yasu had in mind when writing her forgeries and possibly the initial reaction by Touya. So the Battler that gave into the witch and died at the end of EP2 was Forgery!Battler(A), the Battler that appeared in the meta-parlor to save Rosa was actually a new entity, formed by Touya's resolve to solve the mystery, a new Forgery!Battler(B).

The Hachijou Battler was initially conceptualized by a person who had no perfect recollection of who Ushiromiya Battler was, so Touya's Battler, Forgery!Battler(B), does have a clearer intuition of what might have happened, but is likely not based on perfect recollection and thus does not know the actual culprit even if Prime!Battler might have known who it was.
Then there is the post-recollection Hachijou Battler. The question is, is this a seamless transition which makes him the same entity as (B), or do we have to take the meta-death in EP5 as a traumatic transition as well and argue that he is so different from (B) that he would actually have to categorized as Forgery!Battler(C), who symbolizes Touya coming to terms with who Prime!Battler might have been and also realizing what actually happened.

Not quite. For this reasoning to work we'd first have to give a clear definition of Forgery!Battler, which is something that has been often discussed. It is basically the question of, "is Meta!Battler=Forgery!Battler?" or by extension the age old question "do the Forgeries include Meta?"

The Meta!Battler of EP3 at that point knew why Eva was shooting him, because to him she was the culprit in that moment. He trusted Beato so much he was ready to sign into the existence of witches, but was only ripped out of it by Ange's sudden appearance.
The question would rather be, how Forgery!Battler arrived at the point where he accused Eva or if he simply arrived at it by being able to exclude every other possible culprit. They were in the parlor during that scene, so assuming Jessica was dead in the parlor or vanished it wouldn't be unlikely to assume Eva the culprit.

But, if we go by the Meta!Battler=Touya theory, wouldn't it be likely that at the point of releasing Banquet he actually believed in Eva being the culprit? Then we could assume that Ange's appearance in the Meta-World is her attempt at reaching Hachijou Touya, which was mentioned in EP8's ???.

I'm not sure what are you trying to say.

Either way both MetaBattler and PieceBattler believed Eva was the murderer when we know that, unless Banquet is different from how we read, Banquet is structured so that Yasu can kill Nanjo. We know Eva couldn't have killed him as she was under Battler's control.

So Tohya, who wrote the draft for Banquet as he's the one in charge of the drafts, knew Eva wasn't the culprit but PieceBattler and MetaBattler were fooled into believing she was.

The whole Eva-culprit seems a cover story for the Yasu-culprit theory.

And if Tohya was already able to write stories in which he could insert the Yasu-culprit theory he must have, at least, solved the forgeries, who either were never solved or those solution was never accepted (Ange will never say the two tales pointed at Kanon/Shannon as culprits nor she'll investigate over them or why they were painted as culprits).

This would make Tohya the 'gamemaster' and place him in a position completely different by Meta & Piece Battler.

Also, even if the Meta has Ange trying to reach him, apparently he wrote more than one book when she started her travel to Rokkenjima as Ange said she also read End.

We can even wonder if the Meta is actually Tohya's work or Ange's work, her interpretation/fantasy of what her brother would do fighting the witch and how she would try to help him.

And anyway the example mentioned above wasn't there to say that in Prime Eva shoot Battler but that due to certain circumstances despite being present and witnessing certain elements a person could still get a partially wrong picture of the whole story just because he lacks certain pieces.

So Tohya, who wrote the draft for Banquet as he's the one in charge of the drafts, knew Eva wasn't the culprit but PieceBattler and MetaBattler were fooled into believing she was.

And this is where it becomes inconsistent, either because of narrative inconsistency or because your theory does not work in it's entirety. I at least think I remember you being in the team saying that Meta!Battler was a representation of Touya's struggle.
Now if you say that Meta!Battler was fooled into believing she was the culprit and only ripped out of it by Ange's appearance, this would have to be the same for Touya. If Touya knew about Eva not being guilty, then Touya=/=Meta!Battler.

Now we could of course question how it was possible to create a Yasu-culprit applicable plot while not knowing the solution, but I'd argue that it was Prime!Battler's submerged memory which led Touya to create a plot like this. He knew subconsciously what the actual answer is, but did not have the actual power to work towards it.
Though on the other hand you could of course advocate Yasu!Ikuko here and say that she wrote a story around Touya's draft which contained the solution she wanted (Beato!Culprit).

And then there are the hints in EP8 which make you assume that Prime!Battler and Eva actually conspired in creating the Eva!Culprit theory, which was impossible to proof but at least put a lid on the tragedy.

Quote:

This would make Tohya the 'gamemaster' and place him in a position completely different by Meta & Piece Battler.

But he is not.
The GM of EP1-4 is Beatrice, EP5 has Lambda, EP6 has Meta!Battler, EP7 has none and EP8 again has Meta!Battler. This is what is given to us in the narrative and doubting it on such a basic level only disables us to reach common ground.

If you'd argue that Touya=GM, then Touya=Beatrice, which would either mean Touya=Culprit or Touya=Beatrice=Battler or both.

I don't know why but no matter how much I analyze stranger!Ikuko's choices, somehow they never seem the best ones...

I like how you totally ignore the fact that any option besides doing what she did has significant risk of emotionally and psychologically damaging Toya and possibly causing a post-traumatic trigger. Even with the actions she DID take, he attempted suicide atleast once. That was in a stress-free environment where contemplating his history and identity was optional. If he was reported to the media or his family, he would have to confront that whether or not he was prepared for it and would degenerate all the more seriously and horribly.

Did Ikuko do the right thing? Maybe not. Should she have done something else? Maybe so. But it's implied that she did what she thought was best for him at the time, and when he WANTED to speak to his family, she let him do so. When he WANTED to make a public appearance, she let him do so. Toya was not a prisoner. She did not obfuscate information from him or try to shelter him against his wishes. Aside from bribing that one doctor, everything was done by his request.

Quote:

@jjblue1:
A very good breakdown of possible scenarios. Thanks for your hard work. Indeed the possibilities are unlimited and as long as we don't get some kind of confirmation about one of these from R07 in some way (like the EP8 manga), we will continue to stay in the dark. All I wanted to say was basically, that Yasu!Ikuko=evil and Stranger!Ikuko=grey is nothing but an assumption.

Except none of that matters to what I was saying. I wasn't saying Yasu was being malicious or evil. I was saying that no matter what Yasu's motivations are, her course of action as Ikuko is indefensibly unethical because she has the ability to stop Toya's suffering and doesn't do so. At all.

For instance, one of Battler's main worries about recovering his memories is the fear that he might've been responsible for what happened. If he's not, Yasu can just fess up and say that. If he IS, well, she's apparently willing to lie to him anyway if she's Ikuko, so why not just like to him more now? Yasu lies all the damn time. Literally ALL THE TIME. She built her life around deceiving people. Exonerating an amnesiac criminal she's in love with shouldn't be beyond her.

Quote:

All this argument accomplishes, is making a scenario where Yasu does not know who the perpetrator is, at best "a bit less likely" and is no more than a straw man argument.
Also as jjblue1 said, there is the possibility that Yasu was not on Rokkenjima at all during the incident.

Yea there is literally no way Yasu was not on Rokkenjima during the incident, given that she caused it even if she's not the culprit. She creates the situation that causes murders to break out.

And if no one is a murderer? Yasu can just say that. And if she doesn't know, she can just lie, say she does, and tell Toya/Battler. Honestly, why would Yasu NOT do what she can to stop Toya's crisis, unless she doesn't feel like stopping his suffering?

Ikuko as a stranger has an excuse for not intervening, Yasu does not.

Quote:

I was not referring to Prime!Battler/Tohya. I was talking about the fictional Forgery!Battler.

Okay, and? Considering I wasn't even talking about the Forgeries whatsoever, I don't know why you keep trying to bring it up as a counterpoint, unless you don't understand what I'm trying to say.

Quote:

The GM of EP1-4 is Beatrice, EP5 has Lambda, EP6 has Meta!Battler, EP7 has none and EP8 again has Meta!Battler. This is what is given to us in the narrative and doubting it on such a basic level only disables us to reach common ground.

Minor nitpick, Bernkastel is the Gamemaster of EP7, according to both Featherine and the fact that Bernkastel displays Gamemaster authority of the episode. Bern does claim she's not the Gamemaster of EP7's Tea Party, but that's a different 'gameboard' entirely and her honesty is very arguable in this scene.

In the ????, she does claim she "never did any real Gamemastering," but that's also arguable as to what it means. Afterall, EP7's main story didn't have people getting murdered and all that fun stuff Bern likes. She didn't really get to have fun with the task.

I at least think I remember you being in the team saying that Meta!Battler was a representation of Touya's struggle.

I think there's a difference between considering that a theory could possibly be right and blindly believing it to be right.

I considered that theory yes, or better a variation of it in which the Meta was in Tohya's subconscious like some sort of dream (therefore the Metabattler Tohya "dreams/dreams to be" isn't Tohya not has his full knowledge) and I also considered the theory the meta might be Ange's fantasy.

Still:
- I don't get how your discussion ties with the previous. We were talking of a person being in Rokkenjima and not being aware of who was the culprit or mistakenly believing the culprit was X, in reference to the fact that Yasu might have been on the island and not know who caused all the mess not of the layers between Piece, Meta & Tohya. To discuss it I used a part of the story as example.

- If Tohya isn't aware of the right solution than in his eyes there's a huge logic error in it. If he believes everyone is dead then no one could have killed Nanjo. Even without the meta, if you're an author you should know which character is supposed to be dead at that point as if it was a red truth. So the chances are that:
- Ikuko, be her Yasu or not, changed his plot considerably without him realizing
- he wrote a magic story with no mystery solution
- his Banquet and ours are different.

- There's not really need for Tohya to write Banquet to create the Eva culprit theory as Eva was already pretty suspicious herself and, unless she were to confess what had happened or proof that would lead people to think that X happened, Eva would stay suspicious no matter what.

She strangely went in the only safe place in the island, a place that was hidden and whom she wasn't supposed to know about when the house in which she was supposed to reside and that was pretty far from it went KABOOM, killing everyone else who could claim rights on Kinzo's money and it's not explaining a thing. Note that she moved there likely while it was raining pretty bad and, since the explosion happened by night, it's obvious she spent the night there, far from her family. And all this happened while she was in need of money.

It is as suspicious as hell.

Quote:

Originally Posted by haguruma

But he is not.
The GM of EP1-4 is Beatrice, EP5 has Lambda, EP6 has Meta!Battler, EP7 has none and EP8 again has Meta!Battler. This is what is given to us in the narrative and doubting it on such a basic level only disables us to reach common ground.

If you'd argue that Touya=GM, then Touya=Beatrice, which would either mean Touya=Culprit or Touya=Beatrice=Battler or both.

Tohya is writing the book so, in the Prime layer the author is the equivalent of the gamemaster, the one who wrote the tale. And yes, according to my theory all the Meta was created by Tohya therefore he created Beato, Battler, Lambda and Co.

Of course in the Meta Layer the GM are the ones you mentioned but in the Prime Layer we know the first 2 episodes were written by Yasu and the other by Tohya.

Unless you're saying that Yasu actually wrote the first 4 in Prime as well, that somewhere in Prime there's a Lambda who wrote the 5 episode and that Tohya is responsible only for Ep 6?

Anyway I'm sorry, maybe I'm just too tired but I can't seem to get your point. Is it that I've explained myself poorly so you couldn't understand me and this lead to misunderstanding?

Because by your reply I've the feeling we're talking of different things even if we're talking to each other...

Oh true, I mixed that one up, thank you.
Still I wonder what other people think on that point, because this would show that either Author=/=Game Master or Touya is a lot more messed up than we think.

I don't think the Meta-narrative is anywhere near that close to 1:1 like that. I doubt Toya consulted Ikuko's cat for ideas or anything.

Quote:

Or she can write stories that put the blame on a witch.

You mean the thing that caused a huge media shitstorm that made it difficult for Toya to go into the outside world in the first place? Yea, that's a good idea. Ikuko has the motive of helping Toya recover her memories and the ignorance of what happened and who he is to help justify her actions. Yasu doesn't have those qualities.

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Have you tried rereading the conversation?

I did. All I see is GreyZone bringing up the forgeries to attempt to make my argument look stupid with "WELL MAYBE LOLMAGIC MAKES AS MUCH SENSE AS WHAT YOU'RE SAYING EVEN THOUGH YOU DIDN'T MENTION ANYTHING ABOUT THE FORGERIES BUT WERE TALKING ABOUT 1998 LOL"

I'm kind of losing respect for him as an intellectual opponent, not gonna lie.

@AuraTwilight:
All I wanted to say is, that a scenario is POSSIBLE, where:

Ikuko=Yasu was on Rokkenjima, but was not present at the murder scenes and didn't know who the culprit was, while Battler was. This would give Yasu!Ikuko a reason to push Battler/Tohya into remembering what happened. Because she would most likely want to know who killed off (almost) the whole Ushiromiya family, because she may, you know, have also something like an "emotional attachment" toward some of these people. It would make her motives similar to EP8 Ange's motives.
I just wanted to show that we cannot come to conclusions (yet) regarding morals and motivations of Yasu!Ikuko and Stranger!Ikuko with our current amout of information.

But then you came around saying "this is completly impossible, because reasons".

If this is was nothing but a misunderstanding then I apologise and hope we can bury the hatchet and agree to disagree.

If not... then I have no idea why you are so focused on shooting this hypothesis down and not even refraining from the use of straw man arguments.

Had to go back a few pages and see when I started disagreeing with jiblue1 so hard.

So, it seems, I find Yasuko creepy as balls for being in some kind of strange, existential love game with an amnesiac Battler after, by definition , having been heavily involved, at least moderately culpable, in an incident that led to over a dozen people's deaths, and toying around with those people's deaths for the sake of ... I'unno.

Whereas YOU find Strangerko suspicious as balls for not revealing Ushiromiya Battler to the public / his family.

Having read through the posts again, I can concede that perhaps I was a bit hasty to accept Strangerko = Grey, Yasuko = Evil, and unless more information is given, I cannot evaluate her true nature with CERTAINTY. I'm sure a scenario exists where Yasuko is entirely sympathetic, and just trying to do her best in her strange, doctor bribing ways. HOWEVER, I'm quite a fan of Occam's Razor, and I feel Yasuko in general requires far more assumptions, and generous ones at that, for a solution that presents more thematic confusion than it could hope to solve. If I put moral arguments to the side, I find little reason to support Yasuko over Strangerko in the first place. Taking moral arguments into account, I guess the best I could say with certainty is that it's easier to figure Strangerko into the morally grey zone Ikuko / Featherine seems to inhabit, than Yasuko does.

Ceertainly, that does not mean that the simplest answer is always true - as someone pointed out very thoroughly some time back, the ENTIRE suggestion of Axis Italians taking a huge store of gold to FRIGGIN' JAPAN is inherently ridiculous ... however, it is the situation as Ryukishi presented it, and if I doubt that narrative, then it feels like a slippery slope to saying things like "I doubt there was any strange gold / financial shenanigans at all," or "How do we even KNOW there was a person named Ushiromiya Jessica?" or "Eva never loved Hideyoshi. She had ALWAYS planned to divorce him if he ever went below earning a particular salary." It's like, where does the doubt stop?

Anyway, I hope that explains my stance a bit. Yasuko already requires more assumptions by definition, and a sympathetic Yasuko requires even more, so I tend to shy away from it. Certainly, i couldn't PROVE what Yasuko's motives may have been ... but I will still trust the woman who picks up a cat that HAPPENS to be from a house up the road over the woman who picks up the cat KNOWING it's from a house up the road, even if they both treat the cat pretty gosh darned well. Sure, maybe the family in the house up the road were abusing and starving it or something, but there's no evidence or hints or suggestions of such a thing, so I have a hard time going with the KNOWING cat burglar being a good person, even if it's possible. Sorry I keep pushing this cat analogy in this.

@AuraTwilight:
All I wanted to say is, that a scenario is POSSIBLE, where:

Ikuko=Yasu was on Rokkenjima, but was not present at the murder scenes and didn't know who the culprit was, while Battler was. This would give Yasu!Ikuko a reason to push Battler/Tohya into remembering what happened. Because she would most likely want to know who killed off (almost) the whole Ushiromiya family, because she may, you know, have also something like an "emotional attachment" toward some of these people. It would make her motives similar to EP8 Ange's motives.
I just wanted to show that we cannot come to conclusions (yet) regarding morals and motivations of Yasu!Ikuko and Stranger!Ikuko with our current amout of information.

The thing is that Yasu not knowing who the killer is is incredibly unlikely, veering on impossible. She should atleast have a strong idea, considering that the entire incident is intrinsically her fault even in scenarios where she isn't the murderer. She's the one who set up conditions so that violence would break out, even if it was entirely accidental.

Also, she was the only one who has the knowledge and motivation to activate Kinzo's bomb, unless we're entertaining Hilariously Evil Genji as a culprit idea. At the very least she had to know that someone was killing people in order to activate the bomb, which means she knows the culprit isn't one of the dead people, meaning that she would conclude it was someone.

There's no way Yasu was just sitting in the gold room for 36 hours wanking it while murder happened outside; she was going around the island in atleast three different costumes and identities, she had to see something. She has some sort of picture what happened even if it's incomplete.

Even if her picture is incomplete, it should be enough for her to be of SOME help to Toya's crisis. "You're Battler Ushiromiya. I can guarantee that this list of people aren't killers because I was there and I witnessed their corpses."

Even if it wasn't quite that direct, she could've said literally ANYTHING. Yasu, no matter what she knows, knows more than Stranger!Ikuko. She could atleast look at a Forgery and say "That didn't happen" or something. What in the hell is she dragging this out for, because it is demonstratively not for Toya's own mental health or best interests as presented in the narrative. He's SUFFERING, and that's something that SHOULD bother Yasu significantly.

Is it possible that Yasu knew absolutely nothing? Maybe. But it's so astronomically likely, and makes Yasu's distinction from Stranger!Ikuko completely meaningless, so why entertain it?

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If not... then I have no idea why you are so focused on shooting this hypothesis down and not even refraining from the use of straw man arguments.

I'm not resorting to strawman arguments. Strawman arguments are when you misrepresent the other person's argument for the sake of tearing it down.

Which, incidentally, is what you did when you mocked me with sarcastic accusations of Yasu having magical powers and stuff.

Also +1 to literally everything Kealym just said in the post above. Yasu!Ikuko is inherently less supported as an idea.

Alright, I'm gonna take a stab at explaining how I more or less see the whole Touya-YasuKo dynamic.

First, something to consider is how YasuKo would see Touya and Battler in regards to their respective personhoods, since she's so intimately familiar with multiple personas herself. I think that there is no doubt she would see Touya as a different person from Battler, but she may also think Battler still exists in a way.

I've never envisioned that Ikuko wanted Touya to return to being Battler, but that what remained of Beatrice (inside Ikuko) wanted to talk to what remained of Battler (inside Touya). However, those two "stopped existing" in 1986, so the 'rule' is that they can only talk to each other in a fictional world set at that time (regardless of what the year really is); and this is why they are "caught in an endless recurrence" of those two days. This of course ties into Prime how Ange and Battler are both 18 at the same time in the meta-world, because even in 1998 Battler is still trapped in 1986 (come to think of it, it makes Touya's name even more symbolic). Also, this means there is no intention within any part of Yasu to "restore" Battler, since the only part of her that's even interested in him already shares the same 'meta-1986' "plane" of existence.

In fact, the only entity that ever attempted to restore Battler was Touya himself. I don't think it's fair to place the blame on YasuKo for suffering that Touya's own sense of moral obligation caused him.

For Yasu (as a single entity), Touya's suffering from Beatrice's message to Battler was definitely undesired, and possibly unanticipated (since in Yasu's case, her identities' respective memories are cleanly compartmentalized; she could easily have wrongly assumed the same for Touya/Battler). As for how the bottle stories affected Touya directly, we don't really know beyond them giving him headaches. Although, strangely enough for both the YasuKo and StrangerKo scenarios, he delved into his memories and wrote anyway. Thinking of it that way, it seems likely that Ange was his motivation for writing even as early as Banquet.

Incidentally, the above 'rule' about Beatrice not existing in the future is also part of the reason why I'm inclined towards post-incident authorship. Even if Yasu lived after 1986, Beatrice did not, so anything that Yasu might do in the future as Beatrice, such as send a message to Battler, is not allowed to appear to post-date 1986. ...Just an explanation to tie some things together.

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Originally Posted by Kealym

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Good post. As you can see, I've borrowed your YasuKo, StrangerKo terms. It was getting annoying typing it out the various other ways.

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Originally Posted by Kealym

HOWEVER, I'm quite a fan of Occam's Razor.

I generally am too, but then again, how useful was Occam's Razor in solving ShKanon?

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Originally Posted by Kealym

but I will still trust the woman who picks up a cat that HAPPENS to be from a house up the road over the woman who picks up the cat KNOWING it's from a house up the road, even if they both treat the cat pretty gosh darned well. Sure, maybe the family in the house up the road were abusing and starving it or something, but there's no evidence or hints or suggestions of such a thing, so I have a hard time going with the KNOWING cat burglar being a good person, even if it's possible. Sorry I keep pushing this cat analogy in this.

You left out the fact that both of these women went out of their way to make sure that whoever's cat it is doesn't know she has it. Sure, it's difficult to believe that the woman who knows where the cat is from is acting altruistically, but for the other woman who goes out of the way to hide the cat while knowing nothing about where it's from? That's definitely wrong.

I'm not sure what your actual theory is. Yasu was the culprit and killed everyone? MetaBattler is Tohya? Something else?

I won't commit to whether Yasu was the actual culprit or not but I am quite sure that MetaBattler at least examplifies the struggle a part of Touya went through, while trying to recover Battler's memories of Rokkenjima. I don't see him as Touya though, as Touya is a new personality (seperate character) who struggles with the dilemma of being both drawn towards the solution and wanting to discard the memories of a stranger (Battler) altogether.

My point was more in pointing out the deliberate separation and cherry-picking of theories depending on the situation. People seem less inclined to find one straight answer, but try to twist elements around to work out the perfect solution for one aspect of the scenario. In this case it is the separation of Touya and MetaBattler in one moment, while arguing for a metaphoric representation of Touya's internal struggle at another point.

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Tohya is writing the book so, in the Prime layer the author is the equivalent of the gamemaster, the one who wrote the tale. And yes, according to my theory all the Meta was created by Tohya therefore he created Beato, Battler, Lambda and Co.

But wouldn't that imply that he knew the entirety of the answer from the very beginning, even if only subconsciously? And isn't that only possible if he is also the culprit? I'm against creating a clear hierarchical order of reality＞fantasy , I am for an intertwined relationship between both, in which events within our reality are at the same time occurring on the meta-plane.
Let's take the TIP Witches' Tanabata as an example. Bernkastel is taking influence on Ange's attitude towards Eva by promising her mother's definite death as soon as she accepts Eva as a substitute. This tells us more than just the struggle of Touya himself, but also reveals other characters' problems.

I would actually say that within the context of Umineko the gamemaster and the author are to be regarded on different levels. Some scenes simply don't make sense to me if they are simply creations of the mind, so at least to a certain degree, the metaworld is as real as the reality Touya and Ange exist in. The meta beings act out what is written but then again these changes in the metaworld influence what is written.
So the gamemaster (if not all challengers in the metaworld) is representative of the attitude and thought process with which that particular gameboard is approached. In that sense the author is more the gamemaker.

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Originally Posted by Wanderer

Incidentally, the above 'rule' about Beatrice not existing in the future is also part of the reason why I'm inclined towards post-incident authorship.

I was finally to find the passage relating to my critique of the post-authorship theory.

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Narration (Ange): However.

Later on, it was confirmed that a similar message bottle had been recovered from the nearby ocean on the day of the accident by the police in their search for lost articles, and this caused a sensation.

Ootsuki: "It seems that, due to evidence from the surrounding area and the fact that the bottle was sealed, the police had decided that its likelihood of being a fabrication was low, and that it had been abandoned within several days before the accident. And the handwriting for both matched.
This caused the credibility of the scraps of paper discovered by the fisherman to rise.
It seems that magazines and the like have reported on the contents of that message bottle repeatedly, but do you require an explanation?"

Like Kealym already pointed out quite sharply regarding a Yasuko theory, a post-authorship theory also requires us to discard given information without any reason to doubt it beyond the general possibility to doubt anything.

I found it also quite interesting to reread this passage because it led me to another striking element that I had almost completely forgotten about: that is Eva's role in the rise of the occult craze.

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Narration (Ange): In other words, until Kinzo's library was leaked to the public by Eva, Rokkenjima had been nothing more than a nameless island that no one could remember, ......and it definitely hadn't been a witch's island.

However, when knowledge of the Ushiromiya Library spread across the world, Rokkenjima's image immediately took on an occult twist.

Ootsuki: "And so, what happened next was that case with the message bottle. It is what turned that island into a witch's island. A nameless island in the Izu archipelago began to transition into an occult island, and the island of the mysterious witch, Beatrice.
You could say that, lacking either the Ushiromiya Library or the message bottle, the Rokkenjima Witch Legend would never have been established."

It wasn't even the message bottle that gave the initial spark but Eva selling Kinzo's collection to the public. Probably, without this incentive, the fisherman would have also never come out with the story about him discovering the message bottle.
But considering that Eva did not sell the collection until she was in dire need of money, doesn't that hint towards the events of the forgery craze being even less controlled than many people seem to assume?